DovahBilbo

I don’t doodle enough. And when I have been doodling these days, it’s Bilbo Baggins in between the Squires of Dimness. And dragons. Sometimes dragons. If you’ve taken an unfortunate turn around the interwebs and ended up either on my tumblr or Instagram, you may have caught a few of my fandom mashups. My favorite, lately, has been drawing Bilbo if he somehow ended up in Tamriel after a wrong turn passing through Bree…or something. And he discovers he’s the Dragonborn.

Who needs the One Ring when you’ve got Dragon shouts? Well, being invisible sure helps. I was almost going to draw Smaug as Smauglock. But I’ll leave that to the experts.

And while DovahBilbo finds new words of power, Thorin Oakenshield deals with having Apple Maps.

No, YOU come get me.

Sigh. Oh Thorin. Your diva ‘tude. Biblo will have none of it.

Nope

Doodles, foodles, and shame

So I promised myself I’d keep this blog updated. And I’m kinda keeping that promise, like, in thought. And then I thought about how I can keep everything in one blog. I can’t seem to let go of either!

So there it is – doodles on tumblr, doodles on Instagram, and some leftovers here.

Sorry :(!

But anyhoo, this blog is too special to me to actually want to drop it. I almost thought of directing everything to my tumblr where everything’s kinda willy nilly there. All these feels. I can’t even. I can’t I CAN’T

Anyway…

While I still struggle with how I still want to utilize this blog – maybe you might catch some of my doodles I lazily share on Instagram which I have automatically post to my tumblr.

And speaking of tumblr – the Squires of Dimness are (kind of) back!

Middle Earth Baking

No mallorn leaves to wrap these today

So, I’m quite the LOTR/Middle Earth fangirl. And for a long time I’ve been trying to find a recipe for lembas or honey cake that I can work with. I know there are quite a few out there – but some included ingredients that I hardly have on hand or ingredients I can’t really agree with.

Then I recently remembered a recipe for blondies that, from the title of the post, are easily adaptable. And so I worked with that! I thought about ingredients that would likely be used in Middle Earth (definitely not espresso powder or chocolate chips?). I omitted the sugar and replaced it about a half-cup of honey, though, I may have cheated a bit and did use the vanilla – a half teaspoon instead of a full teaspoon as mentioned in the above recipe. And since lembas bread is practically the Elven version of energy bars, I added about a cup of almond meal.

Cram? Honey Cake?

Tasting a bit of the batter gave me a bit of confidence that it just might turn out well!

The baking time was relatively short – about 15 minutes.

So how did it taste?

Mmm! Not bad at all! It had a slight pancake-y flavor with a hint of honey.

After thinking about how this did make me thirsty, I wondered if I actually just baked Beorn’s honey cake instead of lembas?

Anyhoo…on with the recipe! Give this a try and let me know if you would consider this lembas or honey cake.

EDIT (March 12) – I suggested lemon zest in there after thinking vanilla probably didn’t exist in Middle Earth. I think?

Inspired by the blondies recipe from Smitten Kitchen

• 1 stick of butter (8 tablespoons) melted
• 1/2 cup of honey
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla -OR- lemon zest. I realize vanilla may be too exotic in terms of Middle Earth spices, I think.
• dash of salt
• 1 cup flour
• About 3/4 cup of almond meal  – or try experimenting with other ground nuts

1. Butter/grease an 8×8 inch pan. Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix melted butter with honey until smooth. Beat in egg then vanilla.
2. Add in salt, flour, and almond meal (or whichever ground nuts you’re using)
3. Pour batter into prepped pan
4. Bake for about 15 minutes. Check doneness with a toothpick or fork.
5. Let cool, wrap in mallorn leaves and enjoy on your adventures!

A light brown on the outside, with the color of…not exactly cream on the inside.

The Note Swap

A cool surprise in the mail!

Somewhere around the end of March or beginning of April, I signed up for one of Art House co-op’s free projects called The Note Swap where participants send in a note – however and whatever is written along with a SASE. The folks at Art House swap out the notes, we all wait patiently, and voila! Everyone gets a cool surprise in the mail!

The cool thing I liked about it was that I didn’t have to think too hard and try to be stupid fancy. What wasn’t cool was that I took a picture of it before mailing it off…then I stupidly deleted it. So, if any Art House co-op participants got a note that looked like it was written in elementary school with doodles of offices, cars, and computers in place of actual words…that was me.

Anyhoo, a few weeks ago, I received my note swap. And how perfect was it that a RECIPE was in it!

So the recipe was for a Maltese pastry called pastizz, or plural – pastizzi. Let’s see how I fared…

Laying out the ingredients. Uh…the semi-homemade version.

So the recipe called for filo dough, which I’m way too much of a beginner to make, so it suggested refrigerated flaky pastry dough. I grabbed something canned that had the words “flaky” on it thinking I’m all set. The biscuit dough was pretty thick, so I sliced each one in half.

Well, I definitely see why these are also a female genitalia euphemism.

Stuffed in the riccotta, egg, and salt filling, pinched the edges, and baked.

I can’t talk to you if you don’t love cheese-filled pastries.

And did they smell yummy! Though, I’m PRETTY sure I was supposed to get something flakier, like croissant dough because these were a tad on the dense, bready side. Even if I was a little disappointed that they didn’t come out flaky, I actually enjoyed these! I’m always a sucker for cheese-filled pastries and breads. They worked great as a breakfast on the go treat!

So what is it they say? If at first you don’t buy the correct flaky dough – make it yourself? Or buy the right dough. Yeah, that’s it.

Anyhow, another thing I loved about this little project was that it reminded me of instructional pieces – definitely helped that the note that came to me was a recipe. I totally miss letters in the mail and other surprises that aren’t bills or junk mail – don’t you? I’m hoping Art House does one of these again!

The Sketchbook Project 2012 and….2013!

The Starving Squire

Howdy all! As I try to bring this blog back to life (for the umpteenth time) – I wanted to update about my participation in the 2012 Sketchbook project! I’m pretty proud of this one as I actually did something with the cover as you see here.

The subject I picked for this one was “Sandwich” – and I, for the most part, went the literal route of the theme. Like my last sketchbook, I wanted to have some interactive bits. It’s hard to tell in the digitized version but viewers are able to swap out the panels of the pages doodled with giant sandwiches.

BUT if the Sketchbook Project 2012 is coming to your part of town, check out my book (literally!) and see how many sandwich combos you can make!

I’m also taking part in next year’s Sketchbook project. Until I saw the list of themes, I pretty much decided I wasn’t going to do this again. But the “Atlas” theme drew me in, and I’m quite happy it did!

There’s definitely a lot of time to sign up!